Social Claire

Hi Claire,

One minor point- the father wasn't even a teenager at the point of conception, and so I wonder how much sex and relationship advice could have helped here, even in a best case scenario.

Could anyone clarify what advice a year 7-8 boy could expect to get at school these days?

As for the red-top field day, the Friday papers/websites that ran the story could only do so with a 'Sun' logo or cover somewhere prominent, so it had been secured as an exclusive in one way or another. The poor old Guardian was reduced to burying the story halfway through Saturday's paper, using a photo of someone reading Friday's copy of the Sun!

Whether this was done because a) they didn't get a sniff of the story until after the Friday deadline, b) they didn't think it was worth better coverage,  c) They thought it might wind up the readership or d) they couldn't bring themselves to print a Sun logo, who knows.....

Hi David, thanks for your comments.  Re what a 7-8 year old could expect see below:

It is widely recognised that sex education should be more than solely science if it is to meet children’s needs. Ofsted guidance to all schools suggests the following broader learning outcomes for SRE. They give a basis for planning work to develop knowledge and understanding, values and attitudes and personal skills in SRE. They draw on DfES and other guidance on SRE and they reflect elements of the non-statutory framework for PSHE.

By the end of Key Stage 1

Pupils will be able to:

Identify and share their feelings with others

Recognise safe and unsafe situations

Identify and be able to talk with someone they trust

Be aware that their feelings and actions have an impact on others

Make a friend, talk with them and share feelings

Use simple rules for dealing with strangers and for resisting pressure when they feel

uncomfortable or at risk

Pupils will know and understand:

The basic rules for keeping themselves safe and healthy

About safe places to play and safe people to be with

The needs of babies and young people

Ways in which they are like and different from others

That they have some control over their actions and bodies

The names of the main external parts of the body including agreed names for sexual parts

Why families are special for caring and sharing

Pupils will have considered:

Why families are special

The similarities and differences between people

How their feelings and actions have an impact on other people

By the end of Key Stage 2

Pupils will be able to:

Express opinions, for example, about relationships and bullying

Listen to, and support others

Respect other people’s viewpoints and beliefs

Recognise their changing emotions with friends and family and be able to express their

feelings positively

Identify adults they can trust and who they can ask for help

Be self-confident in a wide range of new situations, such as seeking new friends

Form opinions that they can articulate to a variety of audiences

Recognise their own worth and identify positive things about themselves

Balance the stresses of life in order to promote both their own mental health and well-

being and that of others

See things from other people’s viewpoints, for example their parents and their carers

Discuss moral questions

Listen to, support their friends and manage friendship problems

Recognise and challenge stereotypes, for example in relation to gender

Recognise the pressure of unwanted physical contact and know ways of resisting it

Pupils will know and understand:

That safe routines can stop the spread of viruses including HIV

About the physical changes that take place at puberty, why they happen and how to

manage them

The many relationships in which they are all involved

Where individual families and groups can find help

How the media impact on forming attitudes

About keeping themselves safe when involved with risky activities

That their actions have consequences and be able to anticipate the results of them

About different forms of bullying people and the feelings of both bullies and victims

Why being different can provoke bullying and to know why this is unacceptable

About, and accept, a wide range of different family arrangements, for example second

marriages, fostering, extended families and three or more generations living together

Pupils will have considered:

The diversity of lifestyles

Others’ points of view, including those of their parents or carers

Why being different can provoke bullying and why this is unacceptable

When it is appropriate to take a risk and when to say no and seek help

The diversity of values and customs in the school and in the community

The need for trust and love in established relationships

Best wishes, SC

Hi Claire,

Thanks for that, I meant year 7-8 as in 11-12 years old, but you've kindly answered my question anyway! That's a fairly comprehensive list of topics for KS1 and KS2. It makes a lot of sense to frame those topics together, you can see how a classroom discussion could easily move across several at once.

As 11 and 12 year olds  would be working towards key stage 3, do you know roughly how long they would spend on SRE lessons in an average week?

cheers,

Dave

Hi Dave, gawd, there's a question, and one that brings up the need for SRE to be part of the curriculum.   To quote a lad I once worked with 'We get sex education once a term for an hour and then are expected to know what we're doing.   They send the police in to talk about alcohol every other term.'

SRE is patchy - great in some schools, don't get me wrong, but no consistency still after all these years.   All schools are meant to have a policy which all parents should be aware of and agree to.   Bringing it into PSHE & Citizenship means that it will get the attention that it deserves.

Which brings me back to our lad who has just become a dad (and now the young woman is being painted in an even worse light as two others have come forward and said that they too could be the father) - if you look at the curriculum that good SRE should have followed, it might have been different.   However, who knows.....

Cheers for now, SC

Although I agree to a point that SRE could be better (I remember having hardly any at school..) but the point is at the age of 13, children know "sex makes babies" and if they do have un-protected sex, they do risk becoming parents.

The poinient thing here is that (generally speaking) ignorance causes most teenage pregnancies, not a lack of knowledge about contraception. The things that I think need to be addressed in terms of prevention of teenage pregnancies are;

1) The desire so many young people have to "grow up" before they've been children (media fed?)

2) The "it won't happen to me" attitude everyone has, until something terrible happens and they realise they could well turn into a statistic

3) More knowledge and practice with the realistic dolls we've all seen over the last few years, to give people a real idea of what it's like to have a child. This programme should be made part of the national curriculum for ALL school age children including males.